PennSilverTaco's HVAC BS MegaThread!

The brand is Chambers, but made by Whirlpool; I wonder if it's the same Chambers that's famous for gas ovens...?

 

It's been a busy week, and I keep forgetting to add the rest of these pictures. This is the the Chambers dehumidifier after I removed the casing...

 

@Lt. Dangle

Compressor from the dehumidifier made in Italy...? Sometimes the older units are made in the USA, but a lot of them seem to be made in China, Japanese, or Mexico; I've never seen a compressor made in Europe (even Germany)...

 

@Lt. Dangle

My dad was in Ohio last weekend with some college buddies, and the house where the party was held has this 1996 Rheem central A/C. Despite the access panel being removed, the thing was running and works pretty good...

 

@Lt. Dangle

FUN FACT: I had no idea what a heat pump was until about the time I graduated high school!

I was born in 1989, and I lived in ten houses and an apartment from the time I was born. Six of those houses had central air, as did the apartment, but I was barely over a year at that time and we only lived there for a few months. My dad believes that apartment had electric heat, which around here could be a heat pump or electric strip heat. It could very well have been gas, but nobody remembers.

Four houses we lived in did not have central air, three of which were in Northern California and the fourth in Washington state; A/C was rarely needed. Not that this matters, but my parents only owned one of the four places that did not have A/C. The other two California places were owned by the United States Navy, and the one in Washington was rented from one of my dad's Navy buddies.

A pretty dead giveaway as to whether or not an A/C unit is a heat pump or a straight-cool A/C, to a little kid who knows nothing about HVAC, would be that the unit is running when it's really cold out; I never saw the A/C unit at any house we lived in running when it was below about 65 degrees. I didn't witness a heat pump defrosting in person for the first time until November 2008 if I remember correctly, at my aunt and uncle's old house in Northern Virginia (2001 Trane XE1000 Weathertron 5-ton). Heat pumps make a very distinctive sound when defrosting, not to mention that the Trane was spewing steam when I got close to it.

If we'd lived in a house with a heat pump before I turned about 10 or 11, and I'd witnessed it defrosting, there's a good chance that I would have ran inside the house screaming for my parents because I thought that the damn thing was on fire! I've been told by a veteran HVAC tech that adults who own a house with a heat pump, and aren't familiar with how they work, have been known to call their service provider freaking out because they think it's on fire...

 

@Lt. Dangle

My parents bought their first house together in 1988, right before they got married. The house is a 4-bedroom rancher, just under 2,000 square feet, located in Milpitas, California. My dad insists that it had electric baseboard heat, but in a part of California where natural gas is plentiful, I find that hard to believe; I just looked on Zillow at two properties on the same street (next door and directly across the street) that were recently listed for rent. Both have gas stoves, and in the home info both are listed as not only having gas forced air heat, but central air. My parents' house did not have A/C, but it would appear that it has gas heat, and I think my dad is going by the fact that the house had an electric stove. This does not mean shit, as the two houses my parents owned in Virginia had electric stoves in spite of having public natural gas for the heat.

 

@Lt. Dangle

Anyway, so I didn't know what a heat pump was until 2007...

From 2005 to 2007 my parents rented a house from one my dad's Navy buddies that had central air and oil forced air heat. After two years living there, my dad swore he would never buy a house with oil heat. That house was built in 1988 and I'm pretty sure that the entire system was original. The A/C leaked Freon and had to be recharged every spring, and the furnace broke down twice during the winter of 2006-2007.

In April 2007, my parents had a new house built that was finished in September 2007. This was a large end unit townhome with two separate systems for the 1st and 2nd floors. This house has gas heat, a gas stove, and a gas water heater. It was in 2007, the year I graduated from high school, when I started my phase of asking all my relatives if their house has gas or oil heat. In the summer of 2007, we were visiting my aunt and uncle in Northern Virginia; I asked my aunt if the house had gas or oil heat, to which she responded that the house had a heat pump. All she knew about heat pumps was that the outdoor unit ran in the winter, and they were entirely electric; I did not witness my first defrost cycle "steam show" until November 2008.

It is worth noting that when my grandma bought the Bethlehem house in 2006, I still had no idea what a heat pump was. The house in Bethlehem was huge, but actually a condo and not a house. My grandma owned the house, but not the land on which it was built. There were ten identical 3-home buildings in the neighborhood, and my grandma had an end unit. Where the heat pump was located depended on site conditions, but most of them were located in the back of the house next to the deck. Some had it on the side of the house. All of the houses in that neighborhood were built with single-zone central A/C, but at least one homeowner spent a small fortune adding extra ductwork on the second floor and giving the house a second unit for upstairs.

My grandma had 2004 the Goodman, and I do believe that her neighbor had a York Stellar (quite possibly the original unit that was installed when the house was built in 1993-1994). My aunt lived with my grandparents off and on, and she had dog; I was walking her dog in the central common area when I heard what sounded like an air-conditioner running; I investigated and saw that the next door neighbor's York was running. Keep in mind that it was barely 50 degrees at the time, and since I had no idea what a heat pump was, I assumed that my grandma's neighbor was really hot and had the air on...

 

I get this call at least once a year lol. It is extremely common for new HP owners to catch the defrost cycle and freak out. It's understandable.

I will be honest and I get a good chuckle out of it.

 

God, I loved working on these things. So easy and so much room.

I've never worked for a Ruud/Rheem dealer so no reason to brag on them other than to show appreciation for the design.

It also helps that these were followed by the cube units that absolutely sucked as far as space to work with goes. All the electrical was stuffed in the vertical corner. I got one I will be replacing due to leaks here shortly.

These rectangle units were peak design by Rheem/Ruud IMO.

 

My longtime friend and personal trainer’s central air died after more than 20 years of virtually trouble-free service. The house was built in 1958, this Trane was installed in 2001 or 2002 (no idea when it actually got central air), and my friend and her husband bought the place less than a decade ago. The house originally had oil baseboard heat, but they tapped into public natural gas. The Trane still works, but it started leaking Freon recently; I managed to go to a doctor’s appointment, pick up my girlfriend and take her to work, go get us some coffee at Wawa, take her to work, pick up the A/C unit, and still make it to work on time!

 

@6 gearT444E
@ABA180
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@shakerhood
@Speedytech7
@steelcity2
@TnShooter

So yeah, I scored a complete (and FREE) Trane central A/C system!

 

Nice!

 

It's a Trane XE1200 A/C from 2001. It lasted 23 years and literally developed a Freon leak like a month ago! They do not build shit like they used too...

 

NICE

How much is it worth in scrape?

 

Trane has used aluminum spine fin outdoor coils for as long as I can remember, and they are not worth as much as traditional copper tube condensers. The outdoor unit still has some copper in it, but I was lucky enough to get the complete system; Trane indoor coils are just like any other manufacturer's indoor coil, which is the traditional copper tube type, and I reckon that this complete system will bring me anywhere from $120 to $150! I scrapped a complete York 3-ton heat pump (with air handler) earlier this year, but York has a traditional copper condenser and heat pumps always have more copper because they have a reversing valve; Adrianna's Trane is just an air-conditioner, so there's no reversing valve or extra tubing. Still, this one was given to me for free by a friend who lives in the area, so it will be pure profit!